Up close and personal with a tree

On Friday I picked up a new Pentax D-FA 100mm f2.8 macro lens. I have been playing with it for the last few days. On Saturday afternoon I took my son (he got a compact digital camera from Santa in December) and we headed into the forest near Killarney Lake on Bowen Island to see if we can find some photos.

The weather has been very cold and wet over the last few weeks and though the sun emerged on Saturday and had been shining for quite a few hours once we were inside the forest, everything was still dripping with moisture

This is part of what I love about the coastal temperate rainforest system. The forest has its own microclimate and it own sense of place. It is simply teeming with life and atmosphere. Once you enter under the canopy, everything goes quiet. There is an almost oppressive stillness that overwhelms you. Initially the forest seem somewhat monotone, with two or three large tree species dominating the scene and a tangled and messy forest floor to offset the simple vertical trunks of the trees. If you allow yourself to slow down and to adjust to the gentle and slow rhythm of the forest, your senses and perception adjust. Then the beautiful and fine grained details of this place emerge and present themselves.

We did not have to go far, in fact after two hours of shooting images we had barely gone 200 yards into the forest.

The first image I uploaded is an image of the bark on a Douglas fir trunk. It is easy to walk past these beautiful giants and to admire them on a grand scale only. But if you stop and slow down you may get a different perspective and realize just how many organisms make these trees their home and how many layers of colours, textures and life come together to create the bark that covers them.

The second and third images are close ups of the moss that covers the roots of the same tree. Normally moss is furry and lacy. But if you get close enough and enlarge them enough they start to resemble ferns. In fact, once you look, you notice that there are numerous textures and colours of moss in the forest. And that is only one type of plant once you add the lichens, ferns, berries, trees, leafs etc, the complexity is infinite. The brown twig in the third image is a dead leaf from a tree. It reminds me of scales on a reptile at this magnification.

I find that as I allow this little island in the Pacific to touch me and as I open myself to it, that the forests and nature that cover it gradually reveals itself in ever deeper ways. To me that is part of loving this place ever more deeply and of finding the Sacred beauty which is so easily lost on us in our hectic daily rhythms. These forests have a value far beyond the obvious economic and environmental debates. Our spirits are fed by these places and they put the temporality and smallness of our existence into perspective.